


Little Wooden Doll

by lilacsigil



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Deal with a Devil, F/M, Ghosts, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 21:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17129291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: Josie has always lived by deals and bargains, so what's one more with a strange American ghost? But then Andrew Packard survives her attempt to kill him for the ghost, and she is left with nowhere to turn.





	Little Wooden Doll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingacademy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingacademy/gifts).



When Josie had first seen Andrew Packard, she hadn't thought anything in particular about him. A wealthy American eyeing off the local women as if they were all prostitutes begging for his American dollars; she'd seen all that before and fended off a few of them, with exquisite manners, of course. And then she saw his shadow. 

Andrew Packard's shadow wasn't human, and it wasn't his. Yes, the dark silhouette looked vaguely humanoid, and sometimes it even lined up with Andrew's actions, but more often it slid away from him and went exploring, clinging to Andrew's heel by the tiniest scrap of plausible deniability. Josie felt it was daring her to point it out, but she wasn't going to fall for that trap.

Packard was attending a wood pulp conference in Hong Kong, and Josie was working at the hotel in question. Her actual reason for working there was the constant availability of blackmail targets: her current assignment was a Taiwanese millionaire with major investments in Indonesia and Malaysia. Mr Huang was quickly seduced and filmed, which left four days of the conference for Josie to investigate Andrew Packard of Twin Peaks, Washington, USA.

Leading a group of men into one of the conference rooms, she stumbled slightly on the thick carpet so that Andrew would catch her elbow. 

"Are you all right there, miss?" he asked. His hand was cool, as with most men his age, but there was nothing odd about him otherwise. His voice was deep and pleasant.

"Yes, very sorry, very sorry, thank you sir." She had found that American men expected her to perfectly understand everything they said in English and yet have poor English themselves. It was a strange contradiction, particularly here in a British colony, but one she had no difficulty exploiting.

"Aren't you sweet?" he said, but released her rather than going for a subtle grope, and moved on into the conference room. Josie was sure he wasn't exclusively homosexual - he had definitely watched her walk in her tight orange cheongsam - but he seemed disinclined towards her flirting. As she stood by the door and smiled prettily, ushering attendees into the conference room, she happened to glance down and notice that her white shoes had turned black. Packard's shadow was sliding up her legs.

"Stop it," she hissed, using English since it was probably an American ghost.

It paused for a moment, then wound around her left leg like a snake, sliding around and around then upwards onto her thigh, under the orange silk of her uniform cheongsam. She took a silver pin from her hair and firmly stabbed the spirit, making sure not to puncture her own thigh. It slid down to the ground in a puddle, and crept back to Andrew Packard. 

Josie's manager hurried down the hallway towards her. "Josie, Helena just burned her hand in the kitchen. Would you do the tea and coffee service in conference room 2?"

"Of course, Mr Chen," she smiled. She wondered if it was coincidence or the shadow at work. Helena was a clumsy cow, though, so she was inclined to think coincidence. 

When the last of the attendees had made it, Josie closed the doors and took up her station inside the conference room. The meeting itself was an incredibly dull presentation from a Chinese company about the increasing demand for quality wood chips and teaming with China, but large amounts of money must be at stake, because all the men, and the two businesswomen, listened assiduously. Josie was more interested to see if Andrew's shadow was paying attention to her. 

The shadow seemed to be at rest behind Andrew - confused, maybe, since the light came from many sources here and scattered everyone's shadows - but for the first time Josie managed to see its natural shape. It was a tall, skinny tree, bare branches sticking out, with something bulbous near the top. It was swaying slightly, as if caught in a breeze. 

Seeing it more clearly gave Josie a deep feeling of fear, dread curling low in her stomach. It was something that was not meant to be seen, at least not by her. Unfortunately, the shadow tree had noticed her watching, and it slowly extended one long branch in her direction. Closer and closer it came, thinning out as it stretched, until it was barely two millimetres wide. Unlike a real shadow, it darkened as it got further away from its source, and Josie could taste something terrible as it approached, the stink of corpses in the tropical heat. She edged backwards, but she was already by the wall and had nowhere left to go. It made contact with her shoe, then slid rapidly up her body - on the outside of her dress this time - to leave a cold line across her throat. 

"Hello, little girl who lives down the lane. Do you like my sycamore tree?"

"No, I don't." Josie muttered, trying to talk without moving her lips. "Leave me alone." She took the silver pin from her hair again, ready to stab it, but she waited a little longer. It wasn't trying to hurt her right now, and she wanted to know more. Including how it knew her address was in a lane.

"You called me!" It cackled a little. "I can't eat Andrew Packard but I can eat you."

"If you can't eat him, why do you follow him around?" Josie asked, feeling very daring.

"Mmm, he would taste good! Born and grown in my grove. But he knows all the tricks."

"What tricks?"

It cackled again. "Nice try, orange blossom. But, you know what? Andrew Packard is mine when he dies. Mine mine mine."

"What do you want me to do about that?"

"Mmm. Take his protections away."

"You'll have to tell me what they are first."

A businessman gestured for a drink and Josie checked the list for his order; she put on her servile face and brought it over to him. The hostess staffing the alcoholic drinks table, Mabel, made a face at Josie from across the room and lightly touched her own neck. Josie mirrored the gesture and there was a fine line of blood on her finger. She quickly grabbed one of the linen napkins and dabbed it clean.

"No tricks!" she muttered. "You think I can get near a man while my neck is bleeding?"

"No..." it said, sounding strangely abashed. "But we can deal. You don't die of any cause. But you take Andrew Packard's protections when I tell you."

"Deal." To be honest, Josie didn't think her life was worth much where she was now: out of favour with the Triads, trying to buy her continued survival with blackmail on demand for a South African, Eckhardt. Any day now he'd decide she knew too much, and that would be the end of that. The ghost's deal certainly had a trick in it – she had heard too many stories about beings that promised immortality – but she was certain that they could come to some kind of arrangement, at least.

The shadow dropped off her like a falling leaf and back to Andrew it went. Josie suddenly realised how overheated she was, burning up from the inside. Strange. She would have thought a shadow spirit would be cold.

It must have had some influence over Andrew Packard, no matter his protections, because Josie caught his eye at the next morning's business breakfast and from then on he pursued her constantly. She played the innocent, her English at a level that would certainly have got her fired if a manager had heard it, and told a woeful tale of being a hard-working orphan girl of just 21. The ghost didn't approach her again once Andrew had noticed her, and even the shadow looked almost normal. 

It only spoke to her once more, and that was in the first moment she set foot on American soil at Sea-Tac. While Andrew dealt with the airport officials, his shadow slid up Josie's spine and whispered in her ear.

"If you ever leave, I'll pop your head off and keep it."

Despite its mouth-like warmth, Josie's whole body shuddered, enough for Andrew to feel it. 

"Are you all right, my dear?"

"Yes, but...very tired."

He patted her arm consolingly. "Don't worry, we're nearly done here, aren't we?" He glared at the official, who stamped their passports with no further delay. 

Andrew's protections, Josie found, presented themselves to her one by one. She couldn't work out why, but they were mostly made of wood: his bed frame she declared old-fashioned and replaced with a new one; the wood he had delivered for the fire she replaced with clean-burning oak and hickory. She gave him a new key ring and money clip for his birthday, and even managed to replace his worn old desk with a majestic mahogany antique that had once belonged to a judge.

Blue Pines, the house that he lived in - shared with his wretched sister and her husband Pete, which Josie considered very strange considering their wealth - was locally-sourced wood from top to bottom, and that was going to be a problem. The had left several hints for Josie to burn the entire house down, but she thought that would be a little obvious, especially if she happened to be the only survivor. Besides, she was concerned that Andrew might have his will stored in the house rather than in the bank like a sensible person, and she didn't rate her chances in a legal battle with Catherine Martell. And, more immediately dangerous to Josie, Eckhardt had found her by now, and was also very invested in Andrew's death: if both he and the could be bought off together, that would work out very nicely for Josie. Eventually, it did, once she organised Andrew's death in a boat explosion. She should have taken the money and run, right then, but it was all legally complex, and every move was opposed by Catherine. 

The night Laura died, Josie had a dream. She was standing at the end of her old lane in Hong Kong, only the buildings either side had been replaced by towering red curtains. It was as narrow as the lane had been in real life - barely big enough for a small car - but when Josie reached out her arms, she couldn't reach the curtains with either hand. She looked down and saw her own shadow stretched out on the zigzag patterned floor: a trunk, skinny limbs sticking out, a bulb on top. She was the shadow tree. 

She woke up with her heart hammering, a scream forming in her throat that she swallowed down. She couldn't sleep anymore, so she found her robe and wandered downstairs to see night into day.

Laura was dead on the beach by their house, and nothing would be the same again. Josie wrapped her arms around herself in the chill of the morning, remembering the last time she had seen Laura. 

"Little wooden doll, pop, pop, pop," Laura sang to herself, absent-minded as she shuffled through her folder of English vocabulary.

Josie sat opposite. "Laura? What is this song?" 

"Oh! I'm sorry, Josie. It's not really a song, but, well, do you know Johnny Horne?"

"Mr Ben Horne's son. He has the disability?"

"You say, 'he is disabled', Josie, or 'he has a disability.' Yes, I spend time with him every week to give his mother a break. It's just something he was singing."

"I didn't know he could talk. At all!"

Laura smiled, like the sun coming out, and Josie smiled in return, her real smile. "Oh, he mostly repeats things that he's heard. Sometimes he makes bird noises, too, or copies sounds from the TV. I think that's why he enjoys it when I read to him."

"Does he understand books?" She didn't think Johnny Horne would be able to follow a story.

"No, I don't think so! Just the sound of my voice when I'm reading."

"You have the – a very pretty voice, Laura."

"Why, thank you!" She held up a book Josie had marked passages in, _The Great Gatsby_. "Do you want to read through this together?"

"Yes, please, I would like this," Josie smiled. Josie's English was far better than she let on, but even so there were many metaphors and turns of phrase in American English that she had to find in the dictionary, or ask Laura or Pete.

Josie had asked Laura a question – she couldn't remember what it had been, now – and Laura didn't answer. She was staring out the window, haloed by the weak winter sunlight. 

"I think now I understand, how you feel about your husband's death." 

"What do you mean?" Josie asked her, startled, but Laura hadn't replied. 

Laura was dead, now, and Josie remembered those sunny afternoons with dread. 

She had Andrew's old bed brought out of storage. She brought back his old desk, and hung the mill keys on his keyring. She donated the quality oak firewood to an elderly woman, Mrs Tremond, whom Harry said was in need, and returned to burning the offcuts from the mill. And still she felt that she was living in shadow. If even golden Laura fell to it, what chance did Josie have? She'd let it touch her, she'd made a deal with it. 

It was that thought that kicked her out of her stunned state: she had always made deals! Some had worked out for the best, some had left her in danger, but she didn't let it stop her. Besides, the had said she wouldn't die of any cause. Josie could outlast her enemies, even if she couldn't conquer them. Catherine Martell, Eckhardt, even Hank Jennings and his inevitable demands for cash. She could defeat them merely by holding position. 

The only time she doubted herself was the time she should be happiest, which was the time she spent with Harry. She had laughed to herself when she first heard the sheriff's surname, Truman, as if any official could live up to that! But Harry absolutely did, in word and deed, and every time they met Josie was astonished by his dedication and honesty. Sometimes she wanted to hide herself away, like he was the sun burning away at her shadowed secrets, but then when he was gone she only wanted to bathe in his warmth, naked and free. 

Outlast. Outlast. Outlast. The word ran through her mind as Catherine Martell tried to humiliate her; as Ben Horne reneged on deals; as Eckhardt's man Kumagai tried to drag her back to Hong Kong. Kumagai genuinely scared her, but not for the reasons he thought. She was terrified of being carried away from America before she had a chance to fight, knowing that the spirit wanted to keep her head. She drew out the waiting period as long as she could, even trying to eliminate Agent Cooper of the FBI, but in the end Kumagai threatened Harry. Josie might be able to outlast everyone here, including Kumagai, but Harry couldn't. She knew from all the men that she had blackmailed that caring about people was a terrible trap, and yet she couldn't help herself. Her true man, her ray of light. 

"I love you," he said, and Josie had to turn away. 

Kumagai was stupid enough to think that her compliance meant her surrender, and ended up shot in a parking garage in Seattle. 

"! If you want the dead, here's one for you!" she called out, her shadow flickering on the concrete in the harsh orange lights. She waited a few moments, but nothing happened. Kumagai lay dead, his blood black and spreading, and Josie was safe. She drove straight back to Twin Peaks, feeling the life pounding in her body, her heart driving pure light through her veins, and ran straight to Harry. 

That night, she dreamed of the red curtains again. Harry was with her, and she reached out her branches towards him, but he couldn't see her. He looked upwards and had to shield his eyes, dazzled by the brightness above him. An arm reached down – black clad, a man's arm – and Harry, smiling, put his hand in its.

"Harry, no! Stay with me!" she tried to call out, but she had no mouth. Her branches rustled and clacked.

"Thanks, Coop!" he said, and was pulled upwards by Agent Cooper's arm, his feet dangling as he was carried aloft. 

Josie reached out a branch and managed to snag his ankle. She tried to scream at him, to warn him that Cooper was already full of shadow, but still there was only silence. 

"Don't worry," Harry told her, his voice kind as ever. "I won't be long. And you'll be here forever, right?"

Cooper's arm pulled him higher and the delicate twigs at the end of Josie's branch snapped off, dry and dead. They fell to the zigzag floor as Harry vanished into the white glare. 

When Josie woke up she was crying, her tears spilling onto Harry's arm. He was still asleep and she quickly composed herself. No man wanted to see her cry, not real crying. Her mother had told her that. Or was it one of her father's mistresses? She couldn't remember that life anymore. Her life was here, now, and Harry had seen enough of her tears the night before. 

Had she ever been worthy of Harry? Of course not, but that had never really troubled Josie. Firstly, nobody else was either, so that was hardly a consideration. After that, Josie had always done bad things, but she had always been around bad people. She'd never directly hurt anyone she considered innocent or good, though she did her best not to think about collateral damage. Whether or not her reasons would stand up to Harry, Josie considered herself justified in what she had done. She realised that some of her actions, particularly shooting Cooper, were not something that Harry could understand, but at the same time, she was sure that if he had had her life, her experiences, he would understand everything. It made her want to crawl inside his body, to explore every part of him and share all of herself; it also made her feel deeply protective of his generosity and kindness, ready to bite the hands off anyone who wanted to harm him.

By the time Harry awoke, she was clean and composed, nothing left of the shadow that stalked her dreams. 

When she saw that Andrew was alive, Josie fainted in terror. Not of Andrew, no matter what he could expose, but of the ghost dancing at his heels. It had asked for one thing, and she had thought she provided it. And yet, here Andrew was, as hard-faced as his sister Catherine, alive and well and protected. The shadow stretched out across the floor, its branches touching everyone in the room, skipping and dancing in delight. What would it do to her in return for her failure? All this time she had thought that she was outlasting her enemies, but the deal had never been completed. The ghost must be very, very hungry by now. 

Josie's mind raced in desperate circles. Harry couldn't protect her from this – Harry must not protect her from this, in case it was he who was eaten – and Cooper might save her from Andrew or Eckhardt, but not from the real threat. She realised she was beating her hands against the post of her giant wooden bed, one of Andrew's protections, as if it were a cage. It was the local wood: the keyring, the bed frame, the firewood. The ghost wood protected Andrew. Could it protect her? There was perhaps only one person who could answer that question. 

"Hello, Mrs Lanterman. May I come in?" Josie waited on the doorstep of the Log Lady's humble cottage. Wood was piled outside the door for the fire, and Josie wondered for a moment what made that wood different to the Log Lady's precious log. Maybe it was like Kumagai and Harry: both human beings, but one meant nothing and the other everything.

"Of course, but please, wipe your feet. I don't need you tracking that into my house."

Josie obeyed, taking off her perfectly clean shoes at the door. The Log Lady nodded in satisfaction. 

"Tea? I put on a pot just for you."

"Thank you, you are very kind," Josie said, and tears sprang to her eyes when she smelled the aroma. It was the strong black tea that was served for everyday use back home, something she hadn't even thought of in years, but the olfactory memory was incredibly strong. How the Log Lady had that exact blend Josie couldn't even begin to imagine. The Log Lady added milk and sugar without asking Josie, then they sat at her kitchen table, opposite one another.

Josie wrapped her hands around the mug. "This is delicious tea."

"Strong for my tastes. But that's what we're having today. My log told me what you would prefer."

"Thank you," Josie said, addressing the log. She'd never been this close to it before, having avoided the Log Lady at every opportunity. Being a foreigner in Twin Peaks was enough notoriety for Josie: she had not needed the extra sting of the mad woman, although she was impressed by her embarrassing level of conviction. "It tastes like my childhood."

The Log Lady turned her ear to the log, listening carefully. "My log is pleased you are enjoying your tea. It was not easy to find orange blossom pekoe."

That was what the ghost had called her, when she had been wearing her orange-blossom cheongsam. Even more convinced that she had come to the right place, Josie sipped her tea and moved her chair in closer. 

"I made a deal with a spirit, and I think it wants my head."

The Log Lady looked most concerned at that. "What were you thinking, young lady? The beings here are very powerful. They will burn you in the black fire. They burned my husband."

"I'm very sorry for your loss."

"People say you burned your husband, too, but it's not true. I knew Andrew Packard when I was in school. He was in charge of all the boy scouts. He knows this forest well. Yes, very well."

Josie was unable to speak past the lump in her throat. Whether it was fear or the tea-induced nostalgia she could not say.

The Log Lady listened to her log again, her head tilted. "Yes, of course. I understand." She turned to Josie. "You are in great danger. You must find protection, but my log cannot help you. You have already been to the Lodge."

"Is that the place with the red curtains?" Josie asked. "It's horrible there."

The Log Lady's tone was suddenly sharp. "Then you should not have dealt with the creatures that live there! You are not the only one so foolish, and you are not the only one who has been there."

"Why is Andrew safe, then? He has carried the ghost for years!" Josie tried to control her voice, but it was coming out as a wail. 

"Andrew was born here and that conveys certain protections. And certain risks." She rubbed her knee, as if it suddenly pained her. "Andrew can only die by mortal deeds, and he cannot die in the forest lands." 

"Can I protect myself in the same way?"

The Log Lady shook her head, and Josie thought for a moment that she was saying no, but she seemed to be communicating with her log again. 

"Are you sure? What a strange thing to have told her!"

"Please, can you help me at all?" Josie begged. 

"Yes. And no. My log cannot change what has been done in the past, only what is to come in the future. The ghost will not take your head. But it is still true that you will not die from any cause."

"Thank you!" Josie smothered her tears, but she could not stop herself bowing in respect and gratitude. "Thank you for your help."

The Log Lady frowned at her. "It is very strange, to see someone make herself into a doll for the enjoyment of others."

"I'm not a doll. Men may think that, but I don't belong to them."

"A little wooden doll, yes. Every wooden part in place, with a little painted heart. It's time for you to go, Josie."

Josie wrapped her coat around herself and fled, pausing only to retrieve her shoes. She sat behind the wheel of her car, catching her breath.

The ghost would not take her head. She was incredibly relieved at that, though she was still wary of the log's pronouncements. If it couldn't change the past, did that mean that she still owed Andrew's death? Did she need to take all the protections away again, even though it was she who was trying to use them now, not him? Perhaps the ghost did not have much sense of time, and would prompt her as it had in her first attempt to give Andrew to it. If Andrew could only be killed by a human being, perhaps that was why it had been willing to deal with her. 

Pleased with her newly formed plan, Josie fixed her make-up in the car mirror and drove home to Blue Pines. The Log Lady had been extremely useful, even aside from the protection that her log had offered. She had never told anyone about the ghost's threat, so the fact that the Log Lady had known about it was proof enough for Josie that she had some kind of power in such matters. 

Andrew came to see her, contrite and full of offers of forgiveness, which told Josie only that he was much more scared of Eckhardt than he was of her. She smiled her painted-on smile, the doll's face that the Log Lady accused her of wearing, and watched his every move. She had hoped Eckhardt would take care of Andrew himself, but it was becoming clear that she was going to have to work harder to make him do that. Laughing on the inside, she drove up to the Great Northern to meet with him. Perhaps she should tell him the secret of Andrew's survival; Eckhardt was a pragmatic man and Josie was sure he'd be just as happy to see Andrew dead via supernatural means as any other. 

She had sex with him, of course, because he expected it and because he would use it against Andrew, but she also assumed that he would be laxer after sex, more lenient and more willing to listen. She was wrong. 

"How did you help him survive?" Eckhardt shouted at her, grabbing her wrists and hauling her up off the bed. 

"It wasn't me! I told you, it was the ghost!"

"What crap are you feeding me?" He was interested though, his grip loosening from painful to merely imprisoning.

"No, no crap, it's true. Haven't you ever looked at his shadow?"

Eckhardt sneered at her. "What's wrong with you, you superstitious whore? This place is driving everyone crazy. Andrew, you, even the cops here are insane."

"I'm telling you the truth! Get your hands off me!" Josie tried to pull herself free, outraged that the battle she'd fought was so easily dismissed. "Let me go!" 

Eckhardt threw her onto the bed so hard that she bounced right off the side, hitting the rug with a thud, which made him laugh. More fool him, because she had landed right next to her bag, and in it was her gun. She slid up onto the bed, the folds of her silk nightgown hiding her hand and her weapon.

"Eckhardt. Enough." 

"If you weren't too stupid to –"

She shot him right in the chest. He collapsed back on the bed, looking surprised, and caught her gun arm underneath him, dragging her down flat, just as Agent Cooper burst through the door. 

Eckhardt got up, outraged at the intrusion, while Josie stared in horror. He'd been shot in the heart, but he seemed completely unharmed. Perhaps all the men here had ghosts protecting them!

He laughed, taking another step towards Cooper, then he collapsed dead. Josie took a breath, finally. Eckhardt was dead. She rolled upright on the bed, kneeling, with her gun pointed at Cooper. She had shot him once already and she was fairly sure he couldn't die, but she kept thinking of that black-clad arm descending from the sky and taking Harry away in her dream. 

"He tried to kill me!" Josie spat, blinking to make the tears come. 

Cooper's face was harsh and unyielding, and he didn't believe a word she said. 

"You were going to send me back!" she told him, outraged. She didn't deserve a death sentence, and Cooper just wouldn't stop pushing her towards it in his ignorance and bloody-minded attachment to what he thought was right. Eckhardt was a cockroach, and everyone would be better off without him.

Then Harry appeared, and Josie wavered. 

"Put the gun down, Josie!" he shouted at her. 

She looked into his beloved face and saw only betrayal. Something inside her that had always been strong, gave way. She apologised to him, words, falling from her mouth. She couldn't point the gun at Harry, but she didn't want to put it down, though, not with Cooper right there. Cooper would see her killed! 

She searched for the words that would make it right, that would make Harry understand that this was part of her world, not his, and that he should go. There were no words. There was nothing. 

A gravelly voice came from behind her. "Pop. Pop. Pop. Gonna pop that head right off."

"No! You can't!" she cried, though no sound came from her mouth. "The log said!" 

A cold thread laid itself across her throat and she clutched at it, the gun still in her hand but no longer aimed at Cooper. She was gasping for air, her eyes fixed on Harry's face. 

"You can't take my head. I'm still here."

"No, orange blossom, you're leaving right now!"

"I'm still here!" Josie's body had lost all strength and she collapsed onto the bed, just as Eckhardt had. She managed to grit out just a few more words. "You said I'd never die of any causes. Ever."

"Right, right," the ghost muttered. "It's true though. You're not dying of any causes. You're just dying."

Josie was lying on her back now, and somewhere she could hear Laura's voice calling out, distorted and far away. A young man was reaching down from the ceiling. Black flames ringed his body, but he was unharmed, and his face was kind. Her vision focused and she realised he was entirely made of wood. His features smiled out from the whorls of polished timber. This must be the Log Lady's husband, the spirit she said was in the log now. Surely he would protect her! Josie reached up, finally realising that she wasn't really moving at all, and took his hand. 

"Oh, Josie," he said, his voice deep and very quiet. "I can't take you where I want to take you. The things you've done."

"Please, don't let him take my head! I'm sorry!"

"You are sorry, aren't you? Not for what you did, but that you hurt Harry. Very strange, very strange. But a good start, I think. I'll do everything I can. He won't take your head."

"Thank you," Josie whispered, and let go of her body entirely. 

Looking down, she saw the shadow of the tree over her body. Her dead body, she realised, dead for no reason. The tree's limbs were waving wildly, as if it was dancing. 

The ghost looked up at her, flickering between being a grey-haired man with snarling teeth to a blank, deformed ball, the tree branches thrashing at the air. He let out a demented howl and leapt straight at her. 

Josie screamed and fled, though everything felt very strange. She couldn't move so much as flow, and everything was oddly slow and liquid. Fortunately, the screaming man was as slow as she was, his awful cry prolonged into agony. There was somewhere safer, Josie could feel it like a sunny spot on a cold day, and she dove for that place. The ghost's hand – or a branch, maybe both – slapped against the wood beside her, but couldn't touch her. She was safe, and he vanished, the red curtains swinging wildly behind him. 

Somehow, as they moved, the room had changed. Cooper and Harry were gone, along with Eckhardt and Josie's bodies, and even the bed itself. There was no snow on the windowsill, the floorboards were clean. A brown bird was there instead – a wren, Pete had called it; no, it was dark out there and an owl was watching, and someone was in the room but then they were gone. A young man with long hair was in the room, and his movements were slow, slow enough for Josie to see. Johnny Horne reached out his hand and touched the wood of the dresser with the very ends of his fingertips, as if he were testing to see if it would burn him. 

"Little wooden doll," he sang to himself. "Pop, pop. Pop." Then he was gone, too, into the night. Day. Night. 

Josie tried to move her arms, her legs, but they weren't there. All that was left of her, all that was safe, was her head; and that was trapped within the ghost wood of the Great Northern Hotel. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed for Harry, for the log, for anyone, for anything. She was perfectly safe, and perfectly caged. All that was left for her to do was scream into the night, scream so hard that the black fire raced around the edges of her vision, scream until even sound itself died.


End file.
